Georgia Continues Investigation Into ‘Dead Voters’ After Two Cases Debunked

Election personnel check in provisional ballots at the Gwinnett County Board of Voter Registrations and Elections offices in Lawrenceville, Ga. on Nov. 7, 2020. Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images

President Donald Trump’s campaign provided earlier this week several examples of dead people that voted in Georgia, a swing state where Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden currently holds the lead by a slim margin.

In a news release dated Nov. 11, the Trump campaign named four “victims of voter fraud” who had ballots cast in their name in this year’s election despite having passed away, the campaign claimed the ballots were “illegally” cast in their names.

Besides two cases that have been clarified, the Trump campaign asserted that Deborah Jean Christiansen from Roswell, a suburb of Atlanta, voted in the last election. She died in May 2019, but someone registered Christiansen to vote on Oct. 5, according to the campaign, which cited voter records and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC), which “ran an obituary announcing Christiansen’s death at the time of her passing.”

Scott Christiansen, who was married to Deborah Jean told Atlanta’s WSB-TV it “freaked [him] out” after a relative informed him the name of his wife who died last year was used to vote in this year’s election.

Edward Skwiot of Trenton is also shown as “having cast a ballot last week, even though he died in 2015,” Trump’s campaign asserted. The Chattanooga Times Free Press also ran a death notice in April of that year.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger said his office was aware of the “dead voter” allegations and they will be investigated.

The other two of the cases have been found to be legitimate voters.

Newton County officials clarified the issue in a news release earlier this week that the widow of Blalock voted under her husband’s name and has always done it this way.

The Jackson County Board of Elections has since clarified that the second person did vote, but she was a different person “who is entitled to vote.”

Full Manual Hand Recount

Over the past week, Trump and his campaign have said there were voter fraud and irregularities that favored Biden in key swing states.

Meanwhile, Raffensperger said that his state will carry out a manual hand recount of ballots cast during the Nov. 3 election.

“This will help build confidence. It will be an audit, a recount, and a recanvas all at once,” Raffensperger, a Republican, said at a press conference earlier this week. “It will be a heavy lift.”

He said the state will work with county officials to complete a recount before the state’s Nov. 20 deadline.

State GOP officials have alleged there are other inconsistencies in the vote-counting process, which was acknowledged to an extent by Richard Barron, the chief of the Fulton County Elections.

“Let me repeat. Fulton County elections officials told the media and our observers that they were shutting down the tabulation center at State Farm Arena at 10:30 p.m. on election night only to continue counting ballots in secret until 1:00 a.m.,” said David Shafer, the head of the state’s GOP, on Twitter earlier this week.

An employee of the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections processes ballots in Atlanta, Georgia, Nov. 4, 2020. Brandon Bell/Reuters

He added, “No one disputes that Fulton County elections officials falsely announced that the counting of ballots would stop at 10:30 p.m. No one disputes that Fulton County elected officials unlawfully resumed the counting of ballots after our observers left the center.”

Barron told the AJC a week ago that he indeed sent home workers at 10:30 p.m. on Nov. 3 before saying that Republican observers believed the vote-count was done for the rest of the night. He said that five county workers did the final tally of ballots until around 1 a.m. on Nov. 4. A state observer was also present, he said.

Fulton County includes the state’s most populous city and capital, Atlanta.

The entire process appears to have been mismanaged at the state level, claimed Sens. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) and David Perdue (R-Ga.), who called on Raffensperger to step down earlier this week. He refused.

The Epoch Times hasn’t called the race for either Trump or Biden and will wait until outstanding legal challenges are completed. Several news outlets called the race for Biden on Saturday, although the Electoral College and states are the bodies who certify a presidential election.

Jack Phillips contributed to this report.